President Robert Mugabe
has been branded 'shameless' after he flew from Zimbabwe unannounced to join
world leaders attending Pope John Paul II's funeral in Rome.

The trip
which defied a European Union travel ban was denounced by one of Mugabe's
fiercest human rights critics, Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of
Bulawayo.

"That man will use any opportunity to fly to Europe to promote
himself. The man is shameless," said the archbishop.

He also said
Mugabe was exploiting the Vatican's current preoccupation with funeral
arrangements.

The Archbishop recently called for a non-violent uprising
against Mugabe.

In response Mugabe accused the prelate of being "a half
wit" and said he was praying for God to kill him.

By going to Rome
Mugabe, 81, who has been in power since 1980 independence, defied European
Union travel sanctions imposed in 2002 after its observers were barred from
disputed presidential elections, at which Mugabe claimed a further six-year
term.

His ruling Zanu-PF party last week announced it had gained a
two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections similarly marred by
allegations of intimidation and massive rigging.

On Monday, Mugabe
took the floor uninvited at a requiem mass for the Pope in Harare's Catholic
cathedral, attacking western powers for meddling in Zimbabwe's internal
affairs.

"It is sad to note in today's world there are people who want to
dominate other people contrary to the late Pope's teaching," he
said.

Mugabe who is Jesuit-educated, calls himself a Catholic, and
described John Paul II as "a very virtuous man, a virtuous leader of the
Catholic Church".

During an apparently shameless interview with the South
African Broadcasting Corporation to mark his Zanu-PF party's recent victory,
Mugabe said small nations such as Zimbabwe feared "the bullies of this
world", and hoped that big nations would pay heed to the Pope's message of
peace.

The US embassy in Harare on Wednesday joined critics of last
week's elections, expressing concern at the role of police and ruling-party
officials in polling and counting, the association of polling stations with
food distribution and the "drastic discrepancies" between initial
announcements of votes cast and the eventual combined votes announced for
the rival candidates.

In 2002 Mugabe and approximately 100 of his
closest political associates were also barred by the US and many
Commonwealth nations from operating bank accounts on their soil or
travelling there for private purposes.

However, Archbishop Ncube noted
that the Italian Government was obliged by its treaties with the Vatican to
admit Mugabe for the Pope's funeral.

Senior church figures would be
unable to communicate to him their concern at the human rights situation in
Zimbabwe, the archbishop predicted.

"The Secretary of State might be
rather too busy right now to talk to him but when someone in the family has
died you appreciate all the sympathy you can get from all people, even
murders, crooks and thieves like Mugabe," he said.

"In any case what
will he (the Secretary of State) achieve? Mugabe is so stubborn and so
conceited."

His comments, defying draconian new laws that impose a
five-year jail sentence for undermining the dignity or authority of the head
of state, mark a new intensity in the war of words between the two
men.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily
represent the views of Ekklesia

The Scotsman

Mugabe Defies EU Sanctions to Attend Pope's
Funeral

President Robert Mugabe defied a European Union travel ban and
flew from Zimbabwe unannounced to join world leaders attending Pope John
Paul II's funeral in Rome, state radio announced today.

The trip
was immediately denounced by one of Mugabe's fiercest human rights critics,
Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo.

"That man will use any
opportunity to fly to Europe to promote himself. The man is shameless," said
the archbishop.

State radio said the Jesuit-educated head of state
was accompanied by his acting finance minister, Herbert Murerwa, and a
delegation of undisclosed size. It was not confirmed whether his wife,
Grace, was among them, but she normally accompanies her husband on all
foreign trips.

By going to Rome Mugabe, 81, who has been in power since
1980 independence, defied European Union travel sanctions imposed in 2002
after its observers were barred from disputed presidential elections, at
which Mugabe claimed a further six-year term.

His ruling Zanu-PF
party last week announced it had gained a two-thirds majority in
parliamentary elections similarly marred by allegations of intimidation and
massive rigging.

On Monday, Mugabe took the floor uninvited at a requiem
mass for the Pope in Harare's Catholic cathedral, attacking western powers
for meddling in Zimbabwe's internal affairs.

"It is sad to note in
today's world there are people who want to dominate other people contrary to
the late Pope's teaching," he said.

The US embassy in Harare on Wednesday
joined critics of last week's elections, expressing concern at the role of
police and ruling-party officials in polling and counting, the association
of polling stations with food distribution and the "drastic discrepancies"
between initial announcements of votes cast and the eventual combined votes
announced for the rival candidates.

In 2002 Mugabe and approximately
100 of his closest political associates were also barred by the US and many
Commonwealth nations from operating bank accounts on their soil or
travelling there for private purposes.

However, Archbishop Ncube noted
that the Italian Government was obliged by its treaties with the Vatican to
admit Mugabe for the Pope's funeral.

He accused Mugabe of exploiting the
Vatican's current preoccupation with funeral arrangements, the presence of
many heads of state and arrangements for election of a new
pope.

Senior church figures would be unable to communicate to him their
concern at the human rights situation in Zimbabwe, the archbishop
predicted.

"The Secretary of State might be rather too busy right now to
talk to him but when someone in the family has died you appreciate all the
sympathy you can get from all people, even murders, crooks and thieves like
Mugabe," he said.

"In any case what will he (the Secretary of State)
achieve? Mugabe is so stubborn and so conceited."

His comments,
defying draconian new laws that impose a five-year jail sentence for
undermining the dignity or authority of the head of state, mark a new
intensity in the war of words between the two men.

Last week Mugabe
accused the prelate of being "a half wit" and praying for God to kill
him.

Harare - President
Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party has threatened to seize commercial
companies it says are trying to provoke food riots in the wake of last
week's parliamentary elections.

"Some of the manufacturers could
have unilaterally increased prices with the ulterior motive of inducing
people to blame the government and trigger food riots," the head of the
party's women's league, Nyasha Chikwinya, said in an article published on
Wednesday in the state-owned daily newspaper, The Herald.

Trade
minister Samuel Mumbengegwi issued a statement saying manufacturers and
retailers who had raised prices of staples such as sugar, salt, soap and
cooking oil by up to 25 percent since the March 31 poll "should revert to
previous levels because the increases were not
approved".

"We have been understudying the running
of the companies from the days of (1998) food riots and shortages. Enough is
enough. This cannot go on any longer," said Chikwinya.

In 2002,
reacting to foreign pressure, the government stopped militants from invading
companies after the seizure of 5 000 white-owned farms. Some of the invaded
premises belonged to South African subsidiaries, protected by international
investment agreements.

The government has been failing for months
to set new maximum prices in the face of hyperinflation which reached 620
percent last year before falling back to an official 127 percent in March -
a figure many economists question.

Despite the country's
chronic economic problems, with 70 percent unemployment and 3,8 million of
Zimbabwe's 11,6 million population now living abroad, Zanu-PF claimed 78
parliamentary seats in last week's elections, compared to 41 for the main
opposition Movement for Democratic Change. With Mugabe nominating a further
30 in the 150-seat parliament, he may now amend the constitution at
will.

Chikwinya said that under Zanu-PF management of the seized
companies, "we will produce good results and shame our
detractors".

Appealing for an end to panic buying and hoarding,
Mumbengegwi said temporary absence of maize meal from stores was a result of
temporary "logistical problems" and "millers were now bringing the situation
under control."

Mugabe, 81, and in power since the country won
independence from Britain in 1980, alleges Zimbabwe's economic problems stem
from British reprisals for his "fast track" redistribution of former white
farms. But critics say he has undermined production and exports, using
agitation for land reform as a smoke screen to intimidating
opposition.

On the eve of the elections, his government raised the
national statutory minimum wage tenfold to 950 000 Zimbabwean dollars
(R130,32) a month, a move unions predicted would lead to increased
unemployment and illicit use of child labor. - Sapa-AP

Mumbengegwi was trade minister before
parliament was dissolved the day before the March 31 elections.

The
newspaper report said the government feared that manufacturers unilaterally
increased prices with the ulterior motive of making people blame the
government, thereby triggering food riots.

The announcement was the
government's first act since 81-year-old Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party won
widely disputed parliamentary elections on Thursday last
week.

Logistical problems

State price controls were effectively
abandoned about two years ago when the government set them at levels less
than the cost at which companies could produce them.

At the time,
manufacturing stopped, resulting in critical shortages. The legislation has
remained on the official statutes.

Mumbengegwi also said that shortages
of maize meal was the result of "temporary logistical problems with
transporting maize to milling companies, adding "everything will be back to
normal" by Wednesday.

"People should not react to rumours and start panic
buying," he said.

Economists have long predicted critical shortages of
maize meal following the collapse of the country's once robust agricultural
industry after the government backed the removal of about 4 000 white
commercial farmers from their land.

Mugabe in May last year claimed
that the country had produced a record maize harvest of 2.4 million tons and
ordered the United Nations to halt distribution of famine
relief.

Shortfall

However, agricultural experts warned that only
about 800 000 tons would be harvested, less than half the amount needed to
feed people.

Food-shortage organisations have said that about 5 million
people are stricken by famine now for the third year in a row.

During
the election campaign Mugabe toured remote areas of the country where, faced
with cries of hunger, he admitted that the country did not have enough food
and said it was importing grain.

Meanwhile, Nyasha Chikwinya,
spokesperson for the Zanu-PF women's league, said she had sought Mugabe's
approval to seize companies that were creating "artificial shortages of
food".

She said current shortages were a barely-veiled protest by the
manufacturers against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's defeat
in last weeks elections.

Last week's election in Zimbabwe was not
merely stolen. It was stolen with the complicity - no, practically the
encouragement - of Africa's most influential democrat.

If you think
too long about this democrat, moreover, you reach a bleak conclusion. For
all the recent democratic strides in Africa, the continental leadership that
was supposed to reinforce this progress is not up to the
challenge.

The bankrupt democrat in question is Thabo Mbeki, South
Africa's president. For the past few years, he's been promising a
pan-African Renaissance, a new era in which Africans would take charge of
their own problems.

Mbeki led the creation of the grandly titled New
Partnership for Africa's Development, which commits members to the rule of
law and other principles of good government; he's the driving force behind
the peer-review mechanism that's supposed to police compliance with those
pledges.

The New Partnership's principles are quoted frequently by Africa
sympathizers who advocate more foreign assistance, and they've boosted
Mbeki's profile marvelously. Mbeki has become a fixture at the rich
countries' annual Group of Eight summits.

He has been treated by
George Bush and Tony Blair as a player. He has felt emboldened to advance
South Africa as a candidate for a permanent seat on the UN Security
Council.

But do Mbeki's New Partnership principles mean anything? In the
run-up to Zimbabwe's election, when the regime's thugs were denying food to
suspected opposition sympathizers, Mbeki undercut the international pressure
for a fair contest. He expressed a serene confidence that the election would
be free and fair.

He quarreled with the Bush administration's
description of Zimbabwe as an outpost of repression. He did everything, in
other words, to signal that mass fraud would be acceptable.

And so
Zimbabwe's thugs obliged him. Before the election they arranged for ballot
boxes made of see-through plastic and a voters' roll stuffed with fictitious
names. When polling day came, about a tenth of the voters were turned away
from election stations for mysterious reasons. One constituency, in which
14,812 people voted according to election officials, was announced the next
day to have awarded more than 15,000 votes to the president's
nephew.

In this way, the regime won a famous victory - and with it
the power to change whatever's left of Zimbabwe's constitution.

If
South Africa, which could strangle its smaller neighbor's economy by
switching off its electricity, had been tougher beforehand, this fraud might
have been forestalled. If Mbeki had protested after the election, events
also might have been different.

After the election was stolen, the
head of the South African observer mission heaped praise on the process,
declaring that the outcome reflected "the free will of the people of
Zimbabwe" and that "the political climate was conducive for elections to
take place." Zimbabwe isn't the only place where Mbeki has been
disappointing.

On New Year's Day he visited Sudan and addressed its
government. Sudan's Arab leaders are engaged in the systematic killing of
ethnic Africans in the western province of Darfur.

But Mbeki spoke
understandingly of "the challenges facing the government" and reserved his
toughest comments for the easy scapegoat of imperialism. "When these eminent
representatives of British colonialism were not in Sudan, they were in South
Africa, and vice versa, doing terrible things wherever they went," he
lectured.

Mbeki is a tragic figure: He personifies the flaw that his own
New Partnership is intended to inhibit. Open and accountable government is
desirable because it exposes leaders to criticism, obliges them to listen
and so reduces the risk of bad policy. But Mbeki, whose democratic
government is without electable opponents, is no more willing to accept
criticism than to dish it out.

Mbeki's error on Zimbabwe is almost as
terrible as his earlier one on AIDS, when he opposed anti-retroviral
treatment. Zimbabwe is the poster child for the emphasis on governance in
the New Partnership for Africa's Development. It shows how bad government
can ruin a promising society. A country that was once a breadbasket for the
region now depends on food aid; a country that once took in migrants now
exports desperate people by the million. And yet Mbeki, the mastermind and
guiding light of the New Partnership, will not speak out against this
tragedy.

TENSIONS increased in Harare
yesterday after the government deployed police across the Zimbabwean capital
to deter demonstrations in the wake of last week's disputed
elections.

The move came as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Kofi
Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, expressed concern about the
ballot, which returned President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party to
power.

Meanwhile, two British journalists appeared in court yesterday on
charges of reporting without permission, after they were arrested on the day
of the election. Toby Harnden and Julian Simmonds, both of the Sunday
Telegraph, entered not-guilty pleas on charges that they broke Zimbabwe's
tough media laws and immigration regulations. They insist they were in the
country as tourists.

Police were on high alert yesterday after
hundreds of youths believed to be loyal to the opposition leader, Morgan
Tsvangirai, ran amok briefly on Monday.

The opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) draws much of its support from young Zimbabweans,
who bear the brunt of 70 per cent unemployment rates and have lost faith in
Mr Mugabe. But the same youths are also believed to be growing increasingly
impatient with dallying from the MDC leadership, which has not yet announced
what it plans to do in response to Mr Mugabe's victory.

Paul Themba
Nyathi, an MDC spokesman, told The Scotsman that Monday's demonstration had
not been organised by the opposition, "but we do understand why the youths
would demonstrate".

"It was a spontaneous demonstration by the youths who
are disgruntled by the outcome of the elections," said Mr Nyathi, who lost
his parliamentary seat in the south-western town of Gwanda to a little-known
ruling party cadre.

Mr Nyathi said that up to 600 youths took part,
adding: "It would not surprise me if we saw more of these
demonstrations."

Mr Straw added his voice yesterday to growing
international criticism of the polls, saying there was "strong evidence"
that the official results did not reflect the will of Zimbabwe's
people.

He said there were "obvious and serious flaws", which he was
"saddened" that Zimbabwe's neighbours had chosen to ignore.

The
Foreign Secretary pledged that the UK would continue to work with its
international partners for "a return to accountable, democratic government,
which respects the rule of law and the human rights of
Zimbabweans".

In his first official reaction to the polls, Mr Annan
called for dialogue. "The electoral process has not countered the sense of
disadvantage felt by opposition political parties, who consider the
conditions were unfair," Fred Eckhard, the UN secretary-general's spokesman,
said in a statement from New York.

Mr Annan said the government now
needed to build a climate of confidence in Zimbabwe. "He calls on all sides
to engage in constructive dialogue in the period ahead," Mr Eckhard
said.

JOHANNESBURG As Western governments and the United Nations
voiced new reservations about the integrity of Zimbabwe's parliamentary
elections, the nation's opposition party said it would issue a detailed
analysis soon to show how the government had rigged the vote against its
candidates..Five days after the March 31 vote, in which President Robert
Mugabe's party drubbed the opposition Movement for Democratic Change,
Britain and the European Union both said Tuesday that they believed the
election had been seriously flawed..The European Union statement,
issued in the name of Luxembourg, which holds the rotating presidency of the
organization, cited continuing concerns with both Zimbabwe's human-rights
conduct and the atmosphere in which the election was
held...Britain's considerably stronger statement said that evidence
of a fraudulent vote was "rife," citing the turning away of many who had
sought to cast ballots and the wide disparities between the officially
announced numbers of voters and the numbers reported in final election
results..."Given all this, I am surprised and saddened that
Zimbabwe's neighbors have chosen to ignore the obvious and serious flaws in
these elections and have declared them fair," said Britain's foreign
secretary, Jack Straw...Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, the head of the election
observer mission of the African Union, the continent's major international
organization, has urged Zimbabwe's election commission to investigate
allegations of fraud, but has taken no stand on whether the vote was free
and fair..Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front
captured 78 of the 120 seats being contested in the election. When added to
the 30 seats that Mugabe personally selects, that gives the government a
majority of more than two-thirds, enough to change Zimbabwe's Constitution
at will...The Movement for Democratic Change, known as the MDC, won
41 seats, down from 57 in the 2000 election. Many analysts have said that
the scope of the defeat may force the party to change both its goals and its
tactics to reflect its failure to win any of the three national elections it
has contested...On Tuesday, a South African spokesman for the
MDC, James Littleton, said that the party would release a report on
Wednesday detailing what it says is evidence of election fraud. A part of
that report, he said, compares the outcomes in selected races with the final
vote totals the government's election commission announced in the early
hours of April 1, long after the polls had closed...According to
the MDC, there are wide variances between some totals and the election
results, particularly in rural districts where the vote was especially hard
to monitor. For example, he said, the government reported at 2 a.m. on April
1 that a total of 8,579 people had cast ballots in Murehwa South, a district
in Mashonaland East Province..But the announced results in that race
showed that Mugabe's party had won 19,200 votes, compared with 4,585 for the
MDC - more than 15,000 more ballots that the total vote reported
earlier.

WITH the
swearing in ceremony of Vice Presidents Joseph Msika and Joyce Mujuru on
Tuesday, the nation waits with bated breath to find out who else will
constitute Zimbabwe's new Cabinet.President Robert Mugabe has already
declared he will only appoint to his Cabinet elected Members of Parliament
though there have been hints that there could be exceptions to that
undertaking because if he sticks to it, that might limit his room to
manoeuvre.For a beginning, the ghost of the infamous Tsholotsho meeting
could come to haunt the exercise pushing some incumbents out and propelling
newcomers into cabinet.This problem would be further compounded by the
need to ensure gender sensitivities in line with the Sadc protocol that
requires greater women representation in decision-making positions.There
would also be, this time around, a greater focus on economic development and
a need to maintain the momentum that that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe
governor, Dr Gideon Gono, has set in motion in his economic turn around
policy.Observers also note that the landslide victory that ZANU PF
registered in the just ended elections would have boosted the President's
confidence and the country

could see him blending youth,
experience, loyalty and potential in the new cabinet.The emphasis on
sovereignty and territorial integrity is likely to remain
unchanged.President Mugabe is expected to announce the new cabinet soon
so that all institutions of government are in place before the celebration
of the country's silver jubilee on April 18.Below is a list of people
the Daily Mirror thinks could constitute the new cabinet.Ministry of
DefenceMarondera East MP Sydney Sekeramyi is likely to retain his position
as the head of one of the most powerful portfolios in the land. Regarded as
fiercely loyal to the President in addition to his ability to retain the
potentially slippery Marondera East seat, there should be no major
challenges to his position. He has also been touted as a possible successor
to President Robert Mugabe. Former army general, Vitalis Zvinavashe has been
mentioned as a possible defence minister but the ex-soldier has declared he
has no interest in politics.Ministry of State SecurityNicholas
Goche, who won convincingly in Shamva constituency, will most probably be
sworn in as state security chief when President Mugabe announces his new
cabinet. Goche has headed this portfolio for four years and observers say
the President is pleased with his performance so far.Ministry of Foreign
AffairsThe nation could see ambassador Tichaona Jokonya heading this
portfolio following his victory in Chikomba constituency. Jokonya was once
Zimbabwe's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and he should have the
requisite expertise for the post through his dealings with countries whose
foreign policies are hostile to the state of Zimbabwe. He has worked in
diplomatic circles for 20 years and as such his experience cannot be
discounted.Ministry of Health and Child WelfareDavid Parirenyatwa will
in all likelihood retain this post. Since taking over from Timothy Stamps,
he has been active and visible. He has managed to remain untainted by
corruption and his recent victory in Murewa North should have boosted his
standing in the party. There is also the fact that Parirenyatwa blends both
technical expertise and the political correctness to take over the
post.Ministry of Finance and Economic DevelopmentHerbert Murerwa, who
has been the acting minister of this portfolio since the arrest of
Christopher Kuruneri last year, might get the nod ahead of other candidates
on the strength of his partnership with Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor,
Gideon Gono that has overseen a turnaround in the nation's fortunes. Samuel
Undenge, who triumphed over Heather Bennett in Chimanimani constituency, a
rank outsider, cannot be completely ruled out.Ministry of Higher and
Tertiary EducationMurerwa currently heads the ministry but if he is given
the finance brief, then foreign affairs minister Stan Mudenge might take
over this post. Mudenge is an academic of note and has published several
history books some of which have won international prizes. There is also the
possibility that Obert Mpofu, winner in Bubi-Umguza, could be rewarded with
this portfolio for coming out victorious in a Matabeleland North province
known for its support for the opposition. Mpofu is the current governor of
Matabeleland North.Ministry of Home AffairsKembo Mohadi came into
this brief in 2000 and it is highly doubtful that he will be removed from
it. Though disliked by the opposition, his control of one of the most
powerful posts in government has been influential. Furthermore, Mohadi
managed to retain Beitbridge constituency, which is located in Matabeleland
South province - also known for its aversion for the ruling party. He will
be rewarded for this achievement and for his loyalty.Education, Sport and
CultureThe current deputy minister of Education, Sports and Culture, Isaiah
Shumba, could shoot to the top and take over the ministry against the
backdrop of his convincing triumph in Mwenezi.The man has not been
dogged and tainted by any kind of criticism many others have faced.
Speculation is rife that the ministry could be split and Leo Mugabe, MP for
Makonde, could land himself the ministry of sport.Industry and International
TradeIf the president sticks to his undertaking then Samuel Mumbegegwi is
out of government and could be part of the proposed Senate. Speculators have
put forward the name of outgoing Matabeleland North Governor Obert Mpofu.
Mpofu was the ministry's deputy minister before the 2000 parliamentary
elections.Agriculture and Rural DevelopmentMhondoro legislator Sylvester
Nguni is tipped to become the new minister given his background in
agricultural management. Outgoing minister Joseph Made is set to be moved to
another ministry.Ministry of Mines and Mining DevelopmentAmos Midzi, the
ruling party's Harare Provincial Chairman, lost agonizingly narrowly in the
Parliamentary elections in the opposition's stronghold in Harare. If the
President sticks to his undertaking of elected MPs only, then Midzi will be
out. The ministry could then go to Jason Machaya, the winner in Gokwe Kana
constituency and the current deputy minister in this portfolio.Ministry
of Transport and CommunicationsChristopher Mushowe will likely retain this
post. He is said to be a confidante of the President and he managed to win
in Mutare West.Ministry of Information and PublicityWebster Shamu, a
veteran broadcaster and the current minister of policy implementation has
been touted as a likely successor to the post Jonathan Moyo was booted from
after he chose to stand as an independent candidate. Shamu is also the MP
for Chegutu and endeared himself to many people when he offered to stand
down in the primaries and make room for deputy Speaker of Parliament, Edna
Madzongwe.Rugare Gumbo, veteran nationalist and former secretary for
publicity in the ZANU during the liberation war is also in the running as is
George Charamba the current permanent secretary in the
ministry.Environment and TourismThere is no doubt Francis Nhema will
retain his post as minister of environment and tourism. He has managed to
steer clear of corruption and scandal and has overseen a period of growth in
tourism to the point where tourism has become one of the country's top
foreign currency earners. Nhema has also won the elections in Shurugwi
constituency.Ministry of Water Resources and Infrastructural
DevelopmentOlivia Muchena, an agriculturalist, is tipped to take over the
ministry, which was under the ambit of Joyce Mujuru before her elevation to
the post of Vice President. Muchena is widely seen as President Mugabe's
confidante and a competent technocrat.Small and Medium Scale Enterprises
DevelopmentSithembiso Nyoni, who has demonstrated her capacity to deal with
medium and small-scale enterprises over the last five years, will no doubt
retain the ministry.Ministry of Science and Technology in the
President's OfficeFlora Buka, who was the Minister of State in the Vice
President's office, will most certainly takeover from Muchena as a
presidential appointee.Ministry of Energy and Power DevelopmentWith
out-going minister July Moyo not likely to bounce back, his former deputy
Reuben Marumahoko should take over the ministry.Marumahoko had one of the
highest votes in Mashonaland West in last week's Parliamentary elections.
President Mugabe appointed him into the Zanu PF's central committee in
January.

Statement on U.S. Embassy Observation of the Zimbabwean Parliamentary
Elections

United States Department of State (Washington,
DC)

PRESS RELEASEApril 6, 2005Posted to the web April 6,
2005

U.S. Embassy to ZimbabweHarare

On April 1, Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice said of Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections: "Although
the campaign and Election Day itself were generally peaceful, the election
process was not free and fair. The electoral playing field was heavily
tilted in the government's favor. The independent press was muzzled; freedom
of assembly was constrained; food was used as a weapon to sway hungry
voters; and millions of Zimbabweans who have been forced by the nation's
economic collapse to emigrate were disenfranchised."

The U.S.
Government, along with many other governments that observed the 2000 and
2002 elections in Zimbabwe, were not invited to bring in outside observers.
The U.S. Embassy, however, sent 25 teams of diplomats accredited as election
observers by the Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC) around the country
during the pre-election period and on Election Day. On Election Day, U.S.
Embassy teams observed more than 350 polling stations in 59 constituencies
(list attached).

The U.S. Embassy observers noted several patterns of
irregularities that raised concerns about the freeness and fairness of the
process. Of particular concern was a lack of transparency in the tabulation
of vote counts. U.S. observers were excluded from observing counts in four
polling stations. Where they were admitted, observers and officials,
including party representatives and neutral domestic observers, were locked
in the polling station and not permitted to communicate with anyone outside.
At the same time, uniformed police were observed communicating the vote
tallies via radio and telephone. In several observed instances, the
presiding officer confiscated the notes of party polling agents and
independent observers before letting them depart the polling station. In
apparent contravention of Zimbabwean election law, results were not publicly
posted before being forwarded to regional centers and at many stations were
never posted at all. ZANU-PF agents and the police appeared to have improper
roles in the supervision or conduct of the polling stations and in the
operation of ZEC constituency tabulation centers. In several instances,
Embassy observers witnessed uniformed police participating in the vote
compilation instead of ZEC officials at the constituency tabulation
centers.

In addition, some polling stations were located in areas that
would be intimidating to some voters, such as next to police stations or
within 200 meters of a ZANU-PF office. Some polling stations also appeared
to be associated with the distribution of food. Finally, in many polling
stations observed, the percentages of voters turned away were as high as
30%.

Compounding concern over the foregoing irregularities is the silence
of the Zimbabwe Election Commission on crucial issues. It has failed to
release the voting results of any polling stations. It has failed to explain
why its initial release of totals of ballots cast only included six of the
country's ten provinces, nor explained why it never released results for the
remaining four provinces. Moreover, it has failed to explain why
discrepancies between its announced figure for ballots cast in
constituencies for those six provinces differed so drastically from the
subsequently released official combined vote totals for candidates in the
constituencies. We echo calls by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network and
other observers for the ZEC to release this information as expeditiously as
possible and note the absence of this information undermines confidence in
the electoral process.

Constituencies observed by the U.S. Embassy During
the March 2005 Parliamentary Elections:

The CITY of Harare is now lost by ZANU
PF. The recently-ended elections clearly show this. The MDC romped to
victory with astounding margins in the capital city and it is very unlikely
that ZANU PF will ever regain the capital.

For the ruling
party, it is time to acknowledge that the capital city was lost by none
other than Ignatius Chombo. His assault on Town House, hounding Elias
Mudzuri out of office on flimsy grounds and appointing a commission headed
by a ZANU PF stalwart to run the city sealed the fate of ZANU PF in the
"Sunshine City". The fact that Mudzuri was removed and the people were
not allowed to then immediately elect a replacement certainly riled the
residents of Harare. Chombo's machinations were crude and everyone saw
through them. What his actions did was to further entrench resentment of the
ZANU PF government in the capital city. Worse, having virtually
taken over the running of the capital city, the situation got from bad to
worse. There were water cuts on a scale the residents had not seen under
Mudzuri. All work on repairing the roads, started in earnest by Mudzuri,
appeared to have been immediately halted. Citizens wrote letters to editors
complaining about raw sewage in Harare streets, potholes that were expanding
everyday, electricity cuts and a host of other social ills that made their
lives unbearable. With each passing day, the Minister of Local
Government was hammering nails into the ZANU PF coffin with abandon. There
was no way the ruling party was going to win the election in the city with
all this going on. The real issue is simple enough. Yes, ZANU PF is a
liberation party. Yes, ZANU PF was born in Highfield. But, why should the
citizens of these areas continue to support the party when it has, to all
intents and purposes, abandoned them. Why should they cast their
vote for the very same party that had shown contempt for their elected
mayor, and, having done so, failed to deliver clean water consistently,
failed to attend to the potholes that have turned Harare into a laughing
stock? It is obvious that Chombo will be returned to Cabinet, because
undoubtedly, his actions against the people of Harare especially were
sanctioned from high up. The majority of residents in Harare are of the
opinion that Chombo's actions were at the behest of President Mugabe and the
President has done nothing to disprove this suspicion. The ruling
party therefore committed suicide in the capital city. If, after they had
taken over the city, they had then managed to quickly restore water
supplies, repair the potholed roads and settle the issue of housing
shortages, the story would have been different. It is all very well
for ZANU PF to remind people in Harare that Highfield was the cradle of the
liberation struggle, but, as I have said before, Zimbabweans think with
their stomachs: potholes, water cuts and housing shortages are not going to
be erased by the fact of our independence. What happened to being
responsive to people's needs? This is the surest way for the ruling party to
get its votes back in Harare. But this is not going to happen because the
people who the President relies upon in the capital city are nothing more
than opportunists. Opportunists do not have the people's interests at heart.
They get elected and then sit on their laurels, shunning the very people who
elected them, ignoring their problems. Why does ZANU PF think it lost
the Epworth constituency, which it won in 2000? It is because in the five
intervening years, the people of Epworth saw no improvement in their lives.
The infrastructure in that constituency is now in a worse state than it was
in when ZANU PF won the seat. Epworth is still the poorest constituency in
Greater Harare. Who can blame them for wanting to try the opposition for a
change? Who, indeed, wants to be taken for granted? And this is
where the danger lies for ZANU PF. Even in the rural areas, still taken for
granted by the ruling party, the mood may well shift as the MDC gains more
access and talks to the people there. I have personally seen growth points
that are so potholed that no bus can pass through. And this, on a dust road,
where a simple grader can level the road and a roller can compact
it. I sincerely believe that it is time the ruling party started some
serious soul-searching, as opposed to accusing the people of having lost
their way. The people who vote for the MDC have not been led astray. Rather,
they are simply registering their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs
that is eroding their standards of living. If the ruling party
seriously rolled up its sleeves and started working in earnest for the good
of the people, then it may redeem itself in the urban areas. The
party has done it before. After independence, high-density areas that had no
electricity were electrified, clean safe water was made available in the
rural areas, roads were paved and expanded. By doing this, ZANU PF was
basically banking some goodwill. The ruling party has been withdrawing
against that goodwill it banked for 20 or so years now. But their account is
now overdrawn. Instead of insisting that they are entitled to keep
withdrawing against an overdrawn balance, it is time to make some deposits
in the form of tangible deeds to improve the lives of urban people like
correcting the water situation, the housing problem, transport blues and
other ills that have led the bank manager (the electorate, in other words)
to put a stop to any more withdrawals by the ruling party. As for
the MDC, it is clear that the opposition party is still benefiting from ZANU
PF's ineptitude, especially in the urban areas. The party needs to work
a lot harder than it is doing now to remain relevant. It needs to start
getting votes on the basis of its policies, not because "people want a
change". The opposition party still believes that its presence in the
corridors of power alone is enough to improve the lives of the people of
Zimbabwe. It isn't. RESTART, their economic blueprint which I have read
and reread, is not good enough. It relies too much on things that are not
within the control of the MDC. For instance, no party should be allowed to
get into power if its strategy for improving our lives is simply to get the
begging the bowl out and go to the West for aid. This country has enough
resources and brains to make it on its own. There is no nation on
earth that has become rich or successful by accident. All success is by
design and the MDC must start thinking seriously about showing the
electorate that its ideas are better than what is contained in RESTART.

BULAWAYO - Presi-dent
Robert Mugabe, far from discrediting his former propaganda chief, may have
inadvertently handed Jonathan Moyo the Tsholotsho seat when he told people
in the area that the former information minister had refused to listen to
him and his two deputies when they urged him not to stand as an independent
candidate.

Moyo was the only independent candidate to win a seat in
the just-ended parliamentary elections, won by ZANU PF with 78 seats against
the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)'s 41. Moyo's victory was
unique because he won in a rural constituency considered a stronghold of
ZANU PF, and in an area generally regarded as a bastion of the MDC.
The former information minister polled 8 208 votes, while Mtoliki
Sibanda of the MDC polled 6 310 votes and ZANU PF's Musa Ncube, wife of
provincial governor Cain Mathema, got 5 648 votes. President Mugabe
had vowed that there was no way Moyo would win in Tsholotsho. The
ZANU PF leader told a campaign rally at Tsholotsho Business Centre, a week
before the elections, that Moyo had done a lot of terrible things -
including allegedly meeting army commander Lieutenant-General Philip Sibanda
on an unclear mission. President Mugabe and Vice-President Joyce Mujuru
had met Moyo for one-and-a-half hours to try to persuade him not to stand as
an independent candidate but Moyo was adamant he would not budge.
"I advised him that the whole machinery of the party will fall on you and
you will get demolished," President Mugabe was quoted in The Chronicle daily
newspaper as saying. "You can never win against ZANU PF . . . If we
have Tsholotsho voting for Prof Moyo, where will Tsholotsho be going to -
isolation or oblivion? Tsholotsho, of all places . . . the cradle of the
revolution," the 81-year-old leader said. A political observer said
while President Mugabe's sentiments had been meant to de-campaign Moyo, they
had actually propped him up. "Like it or not, people in this region
hero-worship anyone who can stand up to President Mugabe - and that is what
Moyo did. He became an instant hero. President Mugabe became his trump card.
I personally believe that if Moyo had stood on a ZANU-PF ticket . . . he
would have been trounced by Mtoliki Sibanda," the observer said.
But political commentator Lawton Hikwa said Moyo won because he poured a lot
of resources and energy into Tsholotsho. He said Moyo would probably
have won the Tsholotsho seat even on a ZANU PF ticket because he had split
votes with Musa Ncube, which meant that the party could have polled more
than 13 000 votes. The observer, however, said while people appreciated
what Moyo had done in Tsholotsho, they still had reservations about
him. "Moyo's victory in Tsholotsho should not be taken to mean that he
is popular in the region or even in Tsholotsho," the observer said. "He has
done a lot of untold damage to the region. He has isolated the region. The
only good thing he has done for the region is probably to bring on the word
sisonke on national television." Reggie Moyo of the National
Constitutional Assembly said Moyo won because he started his campaign way
back in 2002. According to Reggie Moyo, the former propaganda chief
used national resources to prop up his image but people from Tsholotsho
thought everything that was being done there was being bankrolled by the
sacked ex-minister and not the government. "You would often hear
people saying: 'Nobody has done as much for us as Jonathan Moyo', which
meant he got all the credit for things he had done using state funds,"
Reggie Moyo said. He said Moyo also won because he ran a well-organised
and concerted campaign and had the resources. "He had the cars to
drive up and down to Tsholotsho. Even his campaign posters were of high
quality, better than those from well-funded candidates like those of ZANU
PF, for example. Most independent candidates - like Charles Mpofu, for
example - simply pulled out because they did not have the resources," Moyo
said. Mpofu, a former deputy mayor of Bulawayo who had intended to
contest as an independent in Bulawayo South, pulled out of the race a day
before the elections. Observers said the only question that
remained was whether Moyo would be able to continue with all the programmes
he had initiated - such as scholarships to all schools in Tsholotsho - now
that he no longer had access to state resources.

Zimbabwe's
main opposition party says an investigation into last week's parliamentary
election proves massive electoral fraud in at least 30 seats won by the
ruling party.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says its probe
into four provinces showed serious gaps between official vote tallies given
by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and total votes attributed to
candidates in 30 constituencies.

The MDC says it only examined those
seats because the electoral commission has refused to release figures for
other races -- a decision it says indicates widespread irregularities in
those areas.

President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party won 78 seats,
compared to 41 for the opposition in last Thursday's elections. One seat
went to an independent candidate.

[ This report does
not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

HARARE, 6
Apr 2005 (IRIN) - The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has given
the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) 24 hours to explain discrepancies in
the final tally of votes cast in the parliamentary elections, which saw the
ruling ZANU-PF win a two-thirds majority.

MDC secretary-general Welshman
Ncube said if that did not happen, they would take their case to the
Electoral Court. The MDC made electoral petitions after the 2000 elections,
but since the Electoral Court had not yet been established, these cases were
subject to normal court proceedings and were only finalised just before last
week's elections.

Otto Saki, a human rights lawyer, said the Electoral
Court was compelled by law to finalise all electoral disputes within six
months.

The ZEC, chaired by Judge George Chiweshe, a retired soldier and
war veteran, with Lovemore Sekeramayi, the brother of Defence Minister
Sidney Sekeramayi, as the chief elections officer, has not yet reacted to
claims outlined in a statement by Ncube.

"On the night of 31 March
and the morning of 1 April, officials from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
appeared on Zimbabwe television and gave an account of the total number of
people who had voted in each constituency. The total number of
constituencies, whose figures were given, was 76, before the announcement
was abruptly ceased without explanation," Ncube said in the
statement.

"We have taken time to analyse the figures in relation to
the totals that each candidate polled, as given by officials from ZEC in
announcing the results. In each and every case, we find that there are
glaring discrepancies between the total number given of the people who
voted, and the totals of the results," Ncube noted.

According to ZEC,
36,821 people voted in the Beitbridge constituency, but the the total of
votes cast for the two candidates only added up to 20,602, leaving 16,219
votes unaccounted for, the MDC said.

There are more than 30
constituencies with 5,000 or more votes unaccounted for.

"We urgently
seek an explanation from you as to the reason for these disparities. We have
reason to believe that these disparities are as a direct result of
manipulation of numbers to achieve ZANU-PF victories in constituencies where
they had lost," Ncube told the ZEC.

MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said
the party had submitted its findings to the Southern African Development
Community and the South African observer missions that monitored the
elections.

"Regrettably, these observer missions have so far shown a
chronic lack of interest in such compelling statistics and, instead, have
maintained their respective positions that the elections reflected 'the will
of the people'," Nyathi told IRIN.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
noted that the 31 March poll was conducted peacefully, but expressed concern
"that the electoral process has not countered the sense of disadvantage felt
by opposition political parties, who consider the conditions
unfair".

Annan called on all sides to engage in constructive dialogue in
the period ahead.

The Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project (ZTVP) would like to set
the record straight with regard to certain aspects of the article entitled
"Woman tells of alleged abuse by CIO officers" by Benita van Eyssen of the
Deutsche Press Agency. The story was subsequently carried in The Star on
March 30 under the title "Growing ranks of exiles tell of torture in
jail".

The ZTVP staff mentioned in the article had no authorisation
to speak to the media and the views reportedly expressed do not represent
those of the Project and the Institute for Democracy in South Africa
(Idasa).

The Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project is a project of
Idasa, based at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in
Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

We deal with primary victims and
survivors of organised violence and torture perpetrated in Zimbabwe from the
year 2000 to date, and provide access to psychological, psychiatric,
medical, legal and humanitarian services.

Our objectives
are to provide services that are accessible, holistic and that ensure the
inclusion and participation of victims and survivors in their
rehabilitation.

The ZTVP does not receive, nor has it solicited
funds from Zimbabwe's opposition party, the Movement for Democratic
Change.

The ZTVP is an independent and non-partisan project that
serves all victims of organised violence and torture, whatever their
political affiliation.

The ZTVP is not aligned to any political
party, but is part of the Zimbabwe Solidarity and Consultation Forum that
supports efforts to bring about democratic and accountable governance in
Zimbabwe. As such, the project remains deeply concerned about the human
rights violations reported to it by its client base and the implications
this has vis-^-vis the rule of law in Zimbabwe.

UNFAIR: Zimbabwe's opposition MDC called for a new election as the
African country sank further into political and economic
instability

AP , HARARE, ZIMBABWEThursday, Apr 07, 2005,Page 6A
Movement for Democratic Change lawmaker was arrested over protests against
the outcome of parliamentary elections, which the opposition party says were
rigged.

Also Tuesday, farmers disappointed by low prices for their
crops forced the early closure of the first day of Zimbabwe's annual tobacco
sales.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena announced the arrest of MDC
legislator Nelson Chamisa, the newly re-elected representative of the Harare
suburb of Kuwadzana, on state radio.

Two youths were also detained
for participating in a brief demonstration in Harare on Monday. Bvudzijena
said five shops and a bank had been stoned during the
protest.

"Police have assured the nation they will remain alert to ensure
law and order in the country in the face of threats by the opposition to
bring a reign of terror," Bvudzijena said.

Opposition spokesman Paul
Themba Nyati was not aware of the arrests, and no further details of the
incident were immediately available.

Several hundred opposition
supporters ran through downtown Harare scattering leaflets Monday calling
for mass protests against the outcome of Thursday's poll. Police deployed on
rooftops and set up roadblocks at dawn Tuesday to prevent further
demonstrations.

President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front claimed 78 of Parliament's 120 elected seats, compared
to 41 for the opposition MDC. Mugabe's dismissed information minister,
Jonathan Moyo, also picked up a seat on an independent ticket.

Mugabe
appoints 30 additional lawmakers, giving his party the two-thirds majority
he sought to secure his nearly 25-year rule and amend the Constitution at
will.

Opposition leaders and independent rights groups said years of
violence and intimidation skewed the poll in Mugabe's favor before the first
ballot was cast -- a view echoed by Britain, the US and other Western
observers.

The
country was plunged into political and economic turmoil when the government
began seizing thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution
to black Zimbabweans after the last parliamentary election in 2000. The
often violent campaign, coupled with years of drought, crippled the
agriculture-based economy.

Since last week's poll, bread and maize meal
have disappeared from Harare stores. The price of sugar, cooking oil and
other basic commodities has surged by at least 25 percent, the state-run
Herald newspaper reported Tuesday.

Commerce Minister Samuel
Mumbengegwi blamed the developments on panic buying and accused shop owners
of profiteering. He pledged the nation would not run out of food or
fuel.

Meanwhile, noisy demonstrations broke out at the tobacco sales,
where prices dropped to US$1.9 per kilogram from last year's average
US$2.02. Police were not called, but the sales were cut short, said Rodney
Ambrose of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association.

Just 70 of the 500 bales
on offer were sold.

"It was not really too good a start at all," Ambrose
said.

This year's 64-million-kilogram crop was less than a quarter of
that produced at its peak in the 1990s, when tobacco accounted for a quarter
of Zimbabwe's export earnings.

THE Zimbabwean government's policy of
keeping foodstuff prices artificially low for last week's parliamentary
elections has come back to haunt the ruling Zanu (PF), with the country
experiencing severe shortages this week.

The crisis looks set to worsen
after Zanu (PF) militants blamed the private sector for the crisis and vowed
to seize "companies creating artificial food shortages".

The troubled
country has been hit by shortages of maize, cooking oil, sugar and fuel,
with long queues forming in parts of the capital Harare and other cities as
people scramble to buy basic foodstuffs and fuel.

The crisis also comes
in the wake of attempts by President Robert Mugabe's government to force
shops and companies to maintain its electioneering policy of keeping
foodstuff prices artificially low.

Mugabe's ruling Zanu (PF) won a
two-thirds majority in last week's election.

According to the state-owned
Herald newspaper, Trade Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi ordered retailers and
manufacturers who had raised their prices after last Thursday's election to
go back to the old prices.

Mumbengegwi blamed the shortage of maize on
"logistical problems", and said the situation was now under
control.

However, Brian Kagoro, chairman of the Crisis in Zimbabwe
Coalition, denied the situation was under control and said Zanu (PF) was
paying for its policies.

"The chickens are coming home to roost for
Zanu (PF). Prices were kept artificially low before the election, and now
they are being reset," Kagoro said.

Paul Themba Nyati, spokesman for
the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said the shortages were a
"more compelling case for people to fight Mugabe's
government".

However, economist Eric Bloch said the shortages were
temporary and the result of a "rumour machine", which suggested that there
would be "prohibitive price increases" after the election.

"The
rumour machine created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"There were delayed
deliveries before the election and this encouraged hoarding and profiteering
by some people," Bloch said.

He said the real crunch would come later
this year.

"The bottom line is that our maize crop is only a third of
what the country requires.

"The government will either have to import
the other two-thirds or subsidize maize, something it cannot afford to
do.

"It could choose to allow price increases but that would only refuel
inflation," Bloch said.

The shortage of foodstuffs has been a
perennial problem since the late 1990s in Zimbabwe and Mugabe's regime often
deals with it by controlling prices.

Price controls were officially
lifted two years ago, but Mugabe's regime still intervenes politically to
influence prices. Retailers often react by withholding goods until
government backs down.

The actions of the
retailers have resulted in Zanu (PF) saying it would take over the running
of companies and retail outlets.

The women's league of Zanu (PF) has
asked Mugabe to approve the seizures and has formed a consortium for the
takeovers, the Herald reported.

League spokeswoman Nyasha Chikwinya said:
"We have been understudying the running of the companies from the days of
the food riots and shortages. Enough is enough. We cannot allow this to go
on any longer."

[ This report does
not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

HARARE, 6
Apr 2005 (IRIN) - The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has given
the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) 24 hours to explain discrepancies in
the final tally of votes cast in the parliamentary elections, which saw the
ruling ZANU-PF win a two-thirds majority.

MDC secretary-general Welshman
Ncube said if that did not happen, they would take their case to the
Electoral Court. The MDC made electoral petitions after the 2000 elections,
but since the Electoral Court had not yet been established, these cases were
subject to normal court proceedings and were only finalised just before last
week's elections.

Otto Saki, a human rights lawyer, said the Electoral
Court was compelled by law to finalise all electoral disputes within six
months.

The ZEC, chaired by Judge George Chiweshe, a retired soldier and
war veteran, with Lovemore Sekeramayi, the brother of Defence Minister
Sidney Sekeramayi, as the chief elections officer, has not yet reacted to
claims outlined in a statement by Ncube.

"On the night of 31 March
and the morning of 1 April, officials from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
appeared on Zimbabwe television and gave an account of the total number of
people who had voted in each constituency. The total number of
constituencies, whose figures were given, was 76, before the announcement
was abruptly ceased without explanation," Ncube said in the
statement.

"We have taken time to analyse the figures in relation to
the totals that each candidate polled, as given by officials from ZEC in
announcing the results. In each and every case, we find that there are
glaring discrepancies between the total number given of the people who
voted, and the totals of the results," Ncube noted.

According to ZEC,
36,821 people voted in the Beitbridge constituency, but the the total of
votes cast for the two candidates only added up to 20,602, leaving 16,219
votes unaccounted for, the MDC said.

There are more than 30
constituencies with 5,000 or more votes unaccounted for.

"We urgently
seek an explanation from you as to the reason for these disparities. We have
reason to believe that these disparities are as a direct result of
manipulation of numbers to achieve ZANU-PF victories in constituencies where
they had lost," Ncube told the ZEC.

MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said
the party had submitted its findings to the Southern African Development
Community and the South African observer missions that monitored the
elections.

"Regrettably, these observer missions have so far shown a
chronic lack of interest in such compelling statistics and, instead, have
maintained their respective positions that the elections reflected 'the will
of the people'," Nyathi told IRIN.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
noted that the 31 March poll was conducted peacefully, but expressed concern
"that the electoral process has not countered the sense of disadvantage felt
by opposition political parties, who consider the conditions
unfair".

Annan called on all sides to engage in constructive dialogue in
the period ahead.

TALKS to
resolve a potentially damaging impasse over tobacco prices achieved little
progress yesterday, with farmers saying they would not let up on demands for
higher Zimbabwe dollar prices for the golden leaf.

Tobacco
officials met with Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and government officials
yesterday, seeking a review of the currency rate and a higher subsidy for
their crop, the country's single largest foreign currency earner.
There was an improvement in US dollar prices yesterday, but Rodney Ambrose,
the chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, said there
was still a dispute over the conversion rate. "Tuesday's opening prices
were significantly lower than we expected, but US dollar prices have
improved today (yesterday). Nothing came out of our meetings though. We are
still worried about the local currency return and talks are continuing,"
Ambrose said. Tobacco auction houses cancelled the season's opening
sales on Tuesday after about 150 farmers protested against a sharp drop in
prices. The producers were back at the floors yesterday while the
government, the Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB) and tobacco
associations sought a solution. "We have had a good turnout today
and the quality we have seen is a lot better than yesterday. The issue (over
prices) is before the minister and the TIMB," said Ian Logan, the sales and
marketing manager of Tobacco Sales Floors. By mid-morning
yesterday, although some leaf was fetching as low as US25 cents, prices were
averaging US179.9 cents per kilogramme, still lower than the opening price
of US195 cents but better than the lows of US22 cents that had driven
Tuesday's protests. The opening price was US21 cents higher than last
year's opening day average, but farmers said returns at current prices
lagged behind production costs. Producers say it costs them just
above $20 000 to produce a kilogramme of tobacco, but US dollar prices, at
$6 200 on the greenback, would give returns of about $11 000 for each kg. In
2002, it cost $200 to produce a kg. While producers protested at what
they called unfair prices, buyers yesterday took a dim view of the quality
of the crop that was brought to auction. Brazil and India may be offering
similar quality tobacco for less, a buyer said, insisting the prices were a
true reflection of the crop on view.

South African business leaders have urged
President Thabo Mbeki to engage them and discuss Zimbabwe's economic crisis
which they say has cost the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
R17 million between 2000 and 2003.

Business Unity South Africa
(Busa), a grouping of South African business people, said they have a vital
stake in seeing Zimbabwe resolve its acute economic problems.

"The
inter-dependence of the two economies was highlighted in a recent study
assessing that the Zimbabwean crisis had cost the SADC region R17 billion
between 2000 and 2003," Busa said in a statement broadcast on South African
Broadcasting Corporation.

Zimbabwe, once seen as the economic bread
basket of Africa, is mired in unprecedented economic and political problems,
blamed on the skewed policies of President Mugabe and his ruling Zanu PF
party.

But President Mugabe blames the crisis on Western powers
especially Britain, accusing them of imposing illegal sanctions on the
country as punishment for seizing land from white commercial
farmers.

Busa's calls for President Mbeki to engage them to find a
lasting solution to the problems besetting Zimbabwe come as the country's
captains of industry and commerce are urging President Mugabe and the
country's opposition to bury their differences to rescue a once-prosperous
economy, battered by a five-year recession.

Zimbabwe's economy was
expected to grow in 2005, after contracting by about a third since 2000, but
analysts believe that the disputed results of last week's parliamentary
election could worsen its political and economic crisis.

Mugabe's
ruling ZANU-PF delivered a crushing defeat to the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), which has demanded a re-run because of alleged voting
irregularities. The ruling party grabbed 78 seats against just 41 for the
MDC, while Jonathan Moyo, a former Minister of Information took one after
standing as an independent in his Tsholotsho rural home.

Top banker Nigel
Chanakira and Pattison Sithole president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe
Industries (CZI) told the international media this week that Zimbabwe's
ruling party and the opposition should work together to boost the country's
faltering economy.

"Now that these elections are behind us we should all
focus on moving the economy forward. We need to put Zimbabwe ahead of other
personal or political considerations," Sithole said.

"If
collaboration between the two parties is what is required to bring economic
revival then we should pursue it wholeheartedly."

President Mugabe has
said he is willing to work with the MDC in Parliament.

A NARROW defeat handed to Emmerson
Mnangagwa in the just-ended disputed parliamentary polls has shattered the
former ZANU PF secretary for administration's bid to bounce back into
mainstream politics, with his only realistic chance of survival now resting
with President Robert Mugabe.

Previously seen as a shrewd political
schemer, Mnangagwa, once tipped to succeed President Mugabe until intriguing
political gamesmanships preceding the ruling party's December 2004 congress
dashed his ambitions, all but lost it when the Kwekwe seat slipped through
his fingers for the second time. He became the most senior ruling
party member to lose the right to represent ZANU PF in the august House
after polling 11 124 votes against little-known Blessing Chebundo of the
Movement for Democratic Change, who garnered 12 989 votes. This has
accelerated the decline in his political fortunes touched off last year when
the political backing which he enjoyed from President Mugabe evaporated in
the aftermath of the infamous Tsholotsho debacle, which claimed the scalps
of many ruling party stalwarts. ZANU PF insiders said Mnangagwa, who
was rescued from certain retirement from active politics when he was offered
the chance to take over from Cyril Ndebele as Speaker of Parliament in July
2000, is gingerly sitting on a political knife-edge. His foes, they
say, have resumed the war of attrition against him in a bid to completely
eclipse him from the presidential race now tipped in favour of Vice
President Joyce Mujuru. They said the former justice minister, who
needed to win the Kwekwe constituency to place himself on a firm footing
against other party heavyweights in line to succeed President Mugabe when
his term of office expires in 2008, could be given the less influential
position of minister without portfolio to save his face. That is if
President Mugabe, who saved him the first time around when he was literally
clutching at the straws, does not throw him both ends of the rope.
Alternatively, he could be co-opted into the Senate, which would be created
through constitutional amendments that now look certain after the ruling
party won a two-thirds majority in parliament. Anti-Corruption Minister
Didymus Mutasa, who replaced Mnangagwa as the ZANU PF secretary for
administration, is tipped to take over as leader of the House. Mutasa has
served as Parliamentary Speaker before. Dumiso Dabengwa, the former PF
ZAPU intelligence supremo, is also being touted as another candidate for the
speakership. Mnangagwa, who could not be reached for comment yesterday,
has previously expressed interest in reclaiming his position in
Parliament. "I believe ZANU PF will win the majority of the seats in
the House, probably more than we have now, and I hope also that they will
nominate me to contest for the speakership again. If that happens I will
accept because I am now more experienced," he said late last year.
ZANU PF insiders yesterday said the issue was complicated by the fact that
Mnangagwa, long considered President Mugabe's heir apparent, was supposed to
be the ultimate beneficiary of the Tsholotsho indaba convened on November 18
allegedly to scuttle Vice President Mujuru's ascendancy to the
presidium. The meeting did not go down well with President Mugabe,
who has vowed to crack the whip on all those that attended because it had
not been sanctioned by ZANU PF. This led to six provincial chairmen
being suspended from the ruling party for five years each on allegations of
plotting to influence the composition of the ruling party's four-member
presidium. These are Daniel Shumba (Masvingo), July Moyo (Midlands), Mark
Madiro (Manicaland), Lloyd Siyoka (Matabeleland South), Jacob To
Page 27 Mudenda (Matabeleland North) and Themba Ncube
(Bulawayo). A number of young Turks, a constant thorn in the ZANU PF
old guard's flesh, were also punished for throwing their weight behind
Mnangagwa's unsuccessful campaign for the vice-presidency. This development
comes after Mnangagwa, seen as the unshakeable quiet man of ZANU PF
politics, was implicated in the looting of precious minerals in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo where Zimbabwe had sent in troops to prop
up the government of the late Laurent Kabila. Only last year ZANU
PF carried out investigations into a swathe of its businesses which,
observers said, was to all intents and purposes, targeted at Mnangagwa, the
party's former finance chief. Although Mnangagwa emerged unscathed,
political vultures opposed to his presidential ambitions had already started
circling. "It is a fact that the man (Mnangagwa) tried by emerging the
only loser with over 11 000 votes, but the issue still remains that the
defeat has put him in a difficult position," said the source.
"Although Mnangagwa had put up a brave fight in the urban Kwekwe
constituency, the defeat has also given an opportunity to his foes who are
busy celebrating his downfall."

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe
charmed the press last weekend after delivering a crushing victory for his
ZANU PF party, joking about how the twin stuffed lions that stand guard at
the State House entrance "represent the spirit of their
master".

And economists say he will need a lot of that charm, and a
lion-heart, to deliver an economic recovery that he promised in months of
hard campaigning. ZANU PF seized 16 seats from the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on its way to a two thirds majority
win, leaving the ruling party feeling more secure in power than it has ever
felt since the emergence of the MDC threat in 1999. But ZANU PF's
majority could not save Zimbabweans from waking up this week to price
increases on a string of basic commodities and worse still shortages of
other goods that had been in abundance. With most of Zimbabwe's economic
fundamentals pointing lower, only abated by the courageous efforts of the
central bank, economists are pondering what economic policy a fiercely
self-assured ZANU PF will now follow. Critics fear a return to the
years when ZANU PF had grown arrogant in the absence of a strong political
opponent, rejecting economic prudence for political expediency. In
the past, political measures had been suggested as a remedy for economic
woes and national disintegration. ZANU PF says it will immediately use its
advantage to effect long desired changes to the constitution, but economists
urge the ruling party to instead use its majority to get down to the
business of getting the economy functioning normally again. Pro-ZANU PF
economic commentator Jonathan Kadzura says the ruling party should use its
new dominance to respond to the immediate needs of the economy. The ruling
party, he said, should begin mending fences with the international
community, transferring the means of production to locals and reaching out
to urban Zimbabweans, who once again rejected ZANU PF at the polls.
"We need to begin to make our economy work. Once we begin to create wealth
for our own citizens, start to pay off our foreign debts, it will be easier
for us to engage the international community," Kadzura said this
week. "The urgent business of this new parliament should be the
economy. It is clear that the urban person depends on jobs and a salary,
income earned from working for corporates, as opposed to rural people who
live off the land." Itai Tsakatsa, economist at Guardian Asset
Management, sees the election result as an opportunity for ZANU PF to begin
painful economic reforms that would have been politically risky prior to the
election. "The political pressure is now off (given the huge win) and
this should give government and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) enough
courage to take the tough measures needed to revive the economy. In fact, if
they correctly administer the right medicine now, ZANU PF can actually
campaign on an economy platform at the next election," Tsakatsa told The
Financial Gazette this week. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)
has released a glum outlook on the post-election economy, seeing an even
weaker economy on continued international isolation and a lack of policy
convergence between central bank, leading the recovery effort, and
government. The EIU predicts that the RBZ will continue to push for
more reforms, but will unlikely find support for more fundamental
change. "The key measures of progress with reform will be whether Dr
Gideon Gono can convince President Mugabe of the need to make a major
devaluation of the auction rate after the election and completely eliminate
the dual interest rates," the EIU said in a report on the eve of the
poll. Tsakatsa agrees on the need for devaluation, pointing to pent up
demand for foreign currency that is driving business onto the parallel
market for their hard currency needs. The scarcity of foreign currency is
partly responsible for commodity shortages, Tsakatsa says.
"Devaluation will be a lesser political risk than allowing shortages to
persist," he said. On interest rates, economists agree that RBZ will
likely find it more prudent to hold rates at current levels, or even raise
them over a short period, in response to inflationary pressure rising on a
weaker currency and unplanned grain imports. Official forecasts say
growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be positive this year, up
between 3.5 and 5 percent. Zimbabwe has seen recession over the past six
years, with negative GDP growth of a cumulative 30 percent between 1999 and
2003, but government is pinning its recovery hopes on the RBZ's tough
monetary policy drive.